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No, it is just part of the cycle. It stores CO2 but only temporarily. I remember some statistics that humanity is emitting more new carbon into atmosphere ever

No, it is just part of the cycle. It stores CO2 but only temporarily. I remember some statistics that humanity is emitting more new carbon into atmosphere every decade that entire mass of biosphere. So if you think about it, our biosphere is pretty irrelevant when it comes to removing carbon from atmosphere. Even if we somehow got it to double its entire mass (nobody even dreams of that), this would amount to pausing our emissions for a decade.

danparsonson 5y ago
> So if you think about it, our biosphere is pretty irrelevant when it comes to removing carbon from atmosphere. Didn't understand your point here initially but I think what you mean is - we've significantly outpaced the biosphere's ability to remove carbon from the atmosphere. It's not irrelevant, it's overloaded.
- lmilcin 5y ago
  Okay, so it would be actually more precise if I said "It is irrelevant when it comes to removing CO2 caused by humanity". It is not overloaded. Trees are not concerned by the extra CO2 in atmosphere. Biosphere is a cycle, which means that it has net zero effect on the amount of CO2 in atmosphere. Any CO2 removed from atmosphere is at the same time counteracted somewhere else. Maybe it is burning or rotting or maybe it has been eaten by a breathing and farting camel. More biomass just means there is more CO2 taken out as well as supplied in. The only way it can have non-zero effect on the atmosphere is if we are interacting with what is called sequestered carbon. Humanity is taking out carbon out of long term storage that has been sequestered for millions of years, but there exists no natural process that would counteract it efficiently. There only exists a number of buffers -- an atmosphere as well as oceans.
noselasd 5y ago
It's a storage, but yes it's part of the cycle also. A forrest stores carbon as long as the forrest exists, dead trees emit carbon as they die/rot/burn away, living trees store carbon as long as they are alive (and they help maintain the soil where carbon gets stored also) Once a forrest reach maturity , it will be a store like any other carbon store (but perhaps a fragile one , it can easily be cut or burned down). Basically, if you remove a forrest (e.g. burn it down), most of the carbon is released into the atmosphere - thus it's a storage keeping the carbon it stored away from the atmosphere. Forrests store about 400 billion tons of carbon in total , and we emit about 9-10 billtion tons of carbon per year. (most numbers you find will be of co2, but those 2 oxygen molecules account for quite a bit of the volumn/weight also, so make sure to not mix numbers that account for just carbon with numbers that represents co2 )
3pt14159 5y ago
"Temporarily" is doing a lot of heavy lifting. If we built our cities with wood like we used to they can last hundreds of years. Thousands if we really did it right. There's a Japanese temple that's fourteen centuries old.

danparsonson 5y ago

> So if you think about it, our biosphere is pretty irrelevant when it comes to removing carbon from atmosphere. Didn't understand your point here initially but I think what you mean is - we've significantly outpaced the biosphere's ability to remove carbon from the atmosphere. It's not irrelevant, it's overloaded.

lmilcin 5y ago
Okay, so it would be actually more precise if I said "It is irrelevant when it comes to removing CO2 caused by humanity". It is not overloaded. Trees are not concerned by the extra CO2 in atmosphere. Biosphere is a cycle, which means that it has net zero effect on the amount of CO2 in atmosphere. Any CO2 removed from atmosphere is at the same time counteracted somewhere else. Maybe it is burning or rotting or maybe it has been eaten by a breathing and farting camel. More biomass just means there is more CO2 taken out as well as supplied in. The only way it can have non-zero effect on the atmosphere is if we are interacting with what is called sequestered carbon. Humanity is taking out carbon out of long term storage that has been sequestered for millions of years, but there exists no natural process that would counteract it efficiently. There only exists a number of buffers -- an atmosphere as well as oceans.

noselasd 5y ago

It's a storage, but yes it's part of the cycle also. A forrest stores carbon as long as the forrest exists, dead trees emit carbon as they die/rot/burn away, living trees store carbon as long as they are alive (and they help maintain the soil where carbon gets stored also) Once a forrest reach maturity , it will be a store like any other carbon store (but perhaps a fragile one , it can easily be cut or burned down). Basically, if you remove a forrest (e.g. burn it down), most of the carbon is released into the atmosphere - thus it's a storage keeping the carbon it stored away from the atmosphere. Forrests store about 400 billion tons of carbon in total , and we emit about 9-10 billtion tons of carbon per year. (most numbers you find will be of co2, but those 2 oxygen molecules account for quite a bit of the volumn/weight also, so make sure to not mix numbers that account for just carbon with numbers that represents co2 )

3pt14159 5y ago

"Temporarily" is doing a lot of heavy lifting. If we built our cities with wood like we used to they can last hundreds of years. Thousands if we really did it right. There's a Japanese temple that's fourteen centuries old.